Recap: Nintendo's Media Summit 2008

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The Big N gives us a glimpse into the next several months. Our video wrap up and post-show thoughts.

By Matt Casamassina

Last week, the IGN Nintendo team attended Nintendo's latest Media Summit event in San Francisco to preview some of the games scheduled to become available for the company's Wii and DS platforms. We got to go hands-on with major upcoming releases, from Wii Fit, Boom Blox and Samba de Amigo to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time / Darkness, Crosswords DS, Guitar Hero: On Tour and Sonic Chronicles. And for the first time, we got to play some of the top-quality WiiWare titles scheduled to debut with the launch of the service in America this May. All in all, it was a good show, even if there weren't any considerable surprises or industry-shaking announcements.

No sooner than the event began did Nintendo reveal that the Namco-developed Wii baseball game, officially re-dubbed Mario Super Sluggers, is set to release stateside later this year. The publisher also gave a short demo of the waggle-intensive sports outing that failed to impress us. While the baseball effort features a large cast of Mushroom Kingdom mascots, it seems to bear more in common with Wii Sports than it does to other Namco sports titles, as the majority of character control appears to be mapped to gestures, whether they be swinging movements to hit the ball or -- awkwardly -- waggle to make base-runners sprint or fielders grab the the ball. Beyond the short demo, Mario Super Sluggers was disappointingly not playable, but we're eager to see if our initial impressions hold true or if there is more to the project than meets the eye.

With that initial announcement out of the way, the first day of the show was dedicated entirely to upcoming retail Wii and DS titles. Development studio Vicarious Visions gave a very impressive demo of the Activision-published DS game Guitar Hero: On Tour, which comes packed with a specially designed four-button fret / grip for Nintendo's handheld. To play the title, gamers strum the touch-screen with a unique stylus-pick and from what we could tell, the process works just about as flawlessly as we could have hoped for. We had our doubts, but suddenly the prospect of portable Guitar Hero is very promising, especially since the DS title will ship with a number of exclusive songs and a great duel mode in which two players can sabotage one another, cutting the guitar strings of opponents, sending virtual fans (who want their shirts signed) to each other's screens, and so forth.

Although the title has been available in Japan for months, Nintendo's Media Summit was home to the first fully localized versions of Wii Fit. Since the game is so text-heavy, we jumped headfirst into the opportunity to read and completely understand all of the on-screen prompts and the guidance by virtual instructors. We also played through some of the mini-games and pushed ourselves to compete in some of the exercises. We're happy to report that the end product seems to be awesome -- a truth backed by the fact that, despite featuring the most dedicated kiosks, lines to play Wii Fit were practically never-ending.

Gamers also lined up for the chance to play EA's Boom Blox, a title that is rapidly shaping up to be one of the best third-party offerings of the year. The four-player-compatible puzzler is one part Jenga and another part demolitions. Players try to blow apart Jenga-like block constructions, each piece sporting realistic physics, by first aiming at and locking onto the blocks and then throwing objects at them -- baseballs, bombs, etc. Simple premise, but amazing execution. We're going to have much more on the title in the coming weeks, but we've posted an updated preview with today's coverage. Throughout the course of the two-day event, we must have stopped by the Boom Blox kiosk a half-dozen times -- and upon every return we ran into other players who were coming back for their third or fourth go, too, Nintendo personnel included.

In addition to the aforementioned games, we had the chance to go hands-on with everything from Mario Kart's online mode -- flawless, by the way -- to Samba de Amigo (with two Wii remotes), Crosswords DS (simple and amazing), Sonic Chronicles (still early, but showing a lot of promise), My Weight Loss Coach (the perfect companion piece to Wii Fit?), and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.

On day two, we played lots and lots of WiiWare, delving into much-anticipated U.S. launch titles like LostWinds, which is shaping up to be incredible and World of Goo, a title that couldn't be more perfectly suited to Nintendo's service.

We've posted lengthy impressions, videos and screenshots on our front pages -- both Wii and DS -- for every single game at the event and we highly recommend you browse through our in-depth coverage. We think you're going to be pleasantly surprised with the caliber and polish of some of the WIi and DS games at the show and we know you'll be psyched to learn more about the WiiWare games underway.